© Tim Peeler, 2018
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They
were American heroes, though on the eve of the armistice that ended Europe’s
Great War in 1918, these survivors of disease, military conflict, drought and
bureaucratic mandate hardly felt like it.
So
thoroughly was NC State’s football team beaten on Nov. 9, 1918 — 100 years ago
Friday — it couldn’t even make it through the entire game. Five minutes into
the fourth quarter, team captain William Wagner and head coach Tal Stafford
waved the white flag, telling Georgia Tech head coach John Heisman and the rest
of the Golden Tornado that they, like the trench-bound German forces in France
and Belgium, were surrendering under a constant and withering onslaught.
The
score, with 10 minutes still to play, was 128-0.
Heisman’s
defending national championship team, aided by rowdy fans, scored 19 unanswered
touchdowns, despite having its two best players, halfbacks Joe “Big Chief”
Guyon (a future Pro Football Hall of Fame selection) and Ralph “Buck” Flowers, on
the sidelines almost the entire game because of pregame injuries. Four of
Tech’s touchdowns were scored by halfback David Barron, who of course was
nicknamed “Red,” after German fighter pilot Manfred von Richthofen. End Bill
Fincher booted 14 extra points.
This
was indeed the golden era of the Golden Tornado. In
1916, Heisman’s team embarrassed Cumblerland College 222-0, the most lopsided
game in college football history. In 1917, Tech outscored its nine opponents
491 to 17 en route to the famous coach’s first national championship. The game
against State was the third 100-point outing in five games, in which Tech
outscored its opponents 425-0.
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| John "Gus" Ripple |
NC
State, which lost four players to injuries on the opening kickoff, never crossed midfield. All 12 of its passes fell incomplete. Its only
two first downs came with the aid of Georgia Tech penalties. The only threat
Stafford’s team made at scoring—a 75-yard third quarter fumble return by lineman
John “Gus” Ripple—was called back by a phantom offsides infraction. It was a
negated play that nonetheless turned Ripple
into the state of North Carolina’s first football All-American.
After
his team took a 33-0 lead in the first quarter, Heisman put in his second unit.
They extended the halftime lead to 75-0. The Hurricane added 53 points in the
second half before Stafford and his team called it quits.
According
to halfback Thomas Park in a 1975 interview with NC State historian Bill
Beezley, State College never had a chance. Three times in the early going, Georgia Tech kickoffs sailed into the stands, only to have fans throw the ball back
into the end zone, where Georgia Tech recovered the “fumbles” for touchdowns.
It
was, in short, the most miserable day in NC State football history.
Meanwhile,
Tech rambled to its 33rd consecutive game without a loss, a 31-0-2 streak that
would come to an end in its next game with a 32-0 blowout by Pop Warner’s
eventual national champion Pittsburgh.
On
the surface, it was an overwhelming mismatch of unequal teams that probably
shouldn’t have been played.
However,
State was coming off a 6-2-1 season in 1917, in which it was declared state
champion thanks to wins over Guilford, Davidson and Wake Forest (at the time,
NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill did not play because of disagreements over
eligibility). Prospects were so high at the end of the season, an excited
Agromeck editor taunted: “The morale of
the squad has improved wonderfully, and already each man is looking ahead with
keen anticipation to the crisp days of next November. Georgia Tech? Sure. Why
not?”
Here’s why not:
State coach Harry Hartsell was drafted
into the U.S. Army for military service. Most of the students became cadets in the Student Army Training Corps. On Oct. 15, more than 30
students were shipped off to training schools around the country, including seven
starters from the 1917 football team.
Hartsell turned the program over to
Stafford, his only assistant, who had a splendid athletics career in baseball
and football at State, remembered for completing the first forward pass in
school history. But he eventually gave up his low-paying job as a college
football coach to become the editor of the NC State Alumni News magazine.
The school was fully devoted to
military training, which required all 1,017 students to participate in five
days of drills and multiple military science classes.
Concurrently, the worldwide Spanish flu
pandemic—which killed more people than medieval black plague and World War I
combined—hit campus. The flu was particularly bad in Raleigh and on NC State’s
campus, where some 450 students were infected. A total of 13 students died, as
did some 13,000 people across the state. Among the fatalities were two nurses
at the State College infirmary, Eliza Riddick and Lucy Page. Eliza was the
niece of Wallace Carl Riddick, the school’s president and former engineering
professor who is generally considered the father of NC State football and the
namesake of the Wolfpack’s former football home, Riddick Stadium.
The flu outbreak ended all extracurricular
activities, including all athletics, dances and any activities that required
students to gather in indoor spaces. Five football games, including an Oct. 13
meeting with Navy, were cancelled. The student newspaper was shut down.
Ripple was one of the many students
who contracted the flu, which prevented him from joining the Navy in October.
He recovered in time to continue his football career once the campus-wide
quarantine ended on Nov. 1.
The team, which had started with 50
players at preseason training camp, dwindled to fewer than two dozen members
after military callups and flu casualties. Yet they voted to resume practice in
order to make their scheduled date with Heisman’s Tornado, despite the fact
they were in class until 5 p.m., had to make their way to the football field as
quickly as they could and squeeze in a half-hour of drills before it became too
dark to see on the unlit practice fields at what is now Pullen Park.
“We are working under serious
handicaps,” Stafford wrote in his regular update in the Alumni News. “But we
will try hard to finish the season, and we hope our friends will not be ashamed
of us.”
Stafford and his squad, along with a
handful of fans, boarded a train for Atlanta the day before the game, arriving
at about the same time it was announced that Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated his
crown and the German army was given a 72-hour ultimatum to end all hostilities
in Europe.
The team — called the Aggies or the
Farmers at the time — arrived in a city that had also been completely shut down
by the city’s board of health since Oct. 7 because of the flu, which forced all
schools, churches, libraries, movie houses, theaters, dance halls and other
places of public amusement to close in the wake of the outbreak.
Those that violated the order were imposed a hefty $200 fine. The limited
streetcars that were operating from downtown Atlanta to Georgia Tech were
ordered to keep their windows open.
The
city was also suffering a power shortage caused by a drought that drained the
Tallulah River, the engine behind Atlanta’s hydroelectric power grid. Only
outdoor activities — such as football games and the Southeastern Fair and Liberty
Pageant (featuring Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford) — were permitted, as long
as patrons wore masks to stave off the flu and were back home by 6 p.m. to
reduce the need for lights around the city.
Five
former State College students — all starters on the 1917 state champion team — were
stationed at Camp Gordon, which was located just a few miles outside of Atlanta
in Chamblee, Georgia. They cajoled and pleaded with their superior officers to
get weekend passes to help fill out the football team’s roster. They arrived at
Grant Field just in time for the 2:30 p.m. kickoff, though it is not certain
how much any of them played, if at all, because they were not listed in the postgame
newspaper box score.
Here’s the thing, though. Many of the
players, beginning with Ripple, who made the effort to aid their teammates were
richly rewarded. The day after they returned to Raleigh, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the armistice to end the Great War was signed in Compiegne, France, securing a different future for all the school's students.
Less than a year after losing to
Georgia Tech, two-sport star and Hatteras-native Dick Burrus made his major
league debut with the Philadelphia Athletics. In 1925, he batted .340 in 152
games with the Boston Braves, the highest ever recorded by a former NC State
baseball player in the majors. In all, he played six seasons in the majors for
the Athletics and Braves.
Just after receiving his master’s
degree in Textiles from NC State, Charlotte-native George Murray, a star
pitcher for Stafford’s baseball team for four years, was a teammate of Babe
Ruth on the 1922 New York Yankees that played the New York Giants in the World
Series. He spent six seasons with the Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Washington
Senators and Chicago White Sox.
Ends Andrew Willis McMurry, a native
of Kentucky, and Burt Mitchell, born in Cleveland County, settled in Shelby. Both became textile executives. Mitchell’s son, Burton Mitchell Jr., was a U.S. Army tailgunner in
World War II who died when his plane was shot down in Austria in January 1945.
And Thomas Letson Nooe returned to his
Pittsboro home to become a historian, prominent architect and forester.
In the end, as is often the case with sports, their long-term outcomes greatly
exceeded that of the game decision.
You may reach Tim Peeler at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
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| State College's 1918 corps of cadets |
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